Secretary Panetta: Cut Defense Procurement Budgets

Photo credit: J. Emilio Flores for the New York Times.

When the Panel of Wise People meets to eventually decide on $1.2 trillion of "spending reductions," they are to fall on defense and social expenditures. Let's not cut defense spending on our troops, as we continue to ask fewer and fewer troops to do so much more. When they come home, we don't keep up our end of the bargain with them either. Everybody knows that there is tremendous waste and duplication in the services competing with each other for their own fighters or bombers. Over the decades, we've done precious little of substance on this front.

Pictured above is the Air Force's $12 billion Global Hawk program prototype, designed to replace the long-serving U2, in which Colonel Gary Powers was shot down way back in the Cold War era. It looks almost like a battle ship with wings. With all the progress in miniaturizing digital video technologies to virtual commodities, and progress in making lighter, stronger materials, it seems to me that the concept of this aircraft is a throwback to days gone by. Can't we have a lot more, smaller, dispersed, lower-cost-per unit drones spread over a network? Can't a network of satellites do more functions at a lower cost?

Again, as our military troops on the ground have fallen victim to expensive, failed technologies like Swiss cheese armored vehicles in Afghanistan, I hope that we take a good hard look at DoD procurement programs for some of our recently mandated defense cuts in the coming year.